Spotted here:
Another eye-opener for me was learning that “[s]ome vendors implement safety features such as emergency stop (e-stop) buttons in software.” I certainly wouldn’t want to go anywhere near a powerful robot of any sort that didn’t have its big red button connected pretty darn directly to its power source.
(Gibbers incoherently.)
What... the...
Does NO ONE know how to play this game?
Guys! When you have big, dangerous machinery - or high voltages, or other serious threats to life and health - you use a hardware interlock.
Yeah, there are always demands from Marketing that there be some provision for overriding the interlock. So maybe there has to be a place to plug in an override jumper (which should preferably be big and red and have dire warnings printed on it).
The emergency stop button is for emergencies. Like the software running amok. It needs to work no matter what.
And the things being controlled need to default to a safe state when the controller goes limp, but that's an installation-planning matter... a crane, for example, shouldn't release its load when somebody pushes the Big Red Button on the master control system.
(Wanders off to add yet another layer of protection to an industrial gadget in development.)
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